MovieFone now can handle "thousands of transactions per minute," Fakundiny said. But the site was slow for some users and others were not getting through.

"The demand far exceeded our expectations," Fakundiny said.

Among those who had difficulty using the MovieFone site was Marc Arendt,
a 28-year-old senior at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Arendt said he planned to be in Chicago next week when Phantom Menace opens and wanted to see the movie there, which is why he was trying to buy tickets online.

Arendt said he previewed the MovieFone site a couple of weeks ago to get a feel for where the tickets would be sold. But he said when he returned today, the site had been redesigned and he couldn't find the theater he was looking for.

As of 4 p.m. PT, after trying for about an hour and a half, he said he still had not been able to buy a ticket.

"I gave up," Arendt said, adding that he would try to buy a ticket over the phone. "I'm going to see if I can get through that way."

Arendt wasn't the only one having problems. Other fans reported that they couldn't even access the MovieFone site. CNET News.com tried to access the site for much of the afternoon and was unable to buy a ticket through it.

Fans that did get through to MovieFone were likely to find that they couldn't buy tickets online for their particular theater. AMC, for instance, just began offering online tickets with Phantom Menace, but only at theaters in Los Angeles, San Diego, Kansas City, and Chicago. Online tickets were not available to AMC customers in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Antonio, Atlanta, and other places.

Barry Parr, e-commerce analyst at International Data Corporation, said the problems users faced trying to access MovieFone represent a "lost opportunity" for the company. With all the hype surrounding Phantom Menace online and off, the company had the chance to convince people to buy their tickets online, and the fact that many users were unable to do
so "is not going to inspire confidence," Parr said.

But despite the problems, the Star Wars "prequel" could be a boon for online ticket sales in the future by raising awareness among movie goers that they can buy their tickets on the Net.

"This could be one of those threshold events in that particular business," Parr said.